Working at formatting A Fox's Wedding so I can upload it to KDP. Made somewhat more difficult by the fact that I'm taking the chance to clean up the formatting on all three existing books.
Oh, and the "next time" is going to be difficult...I don't have a plot for the Paris book yet!
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So MICE -- Orson Scott-Card came up with the acronym and concept -- is a nice tool, but for understanding how stories are constructed. Not for constructing one. I thought I'd look at the Kyoto book since I am, at the moment, proofing it. That and re-writing the epilog, which is at least somewhat apropos.
I think it is a Milieu story. At least, that's the outer frame. It starts with her entering Japan, and it ends with her ready to leave Japan for the next adventure. That's the way MICE works; when possible, they nest (ye wan timorous beastie) that is, first in, last out.
I was very conscious of location. The opening scene is on a flight but I set it up as being "in" Japan; it is a JAL flight, the announcements are in Japanese, and there are elements of the flight that are going to be part of her experience.
It is also very much about movement. In the London story, it was all about going underground; there were specific moments and specific choices all the way through that, over time, drove Penny deeper and deeper; physically as well as within the story she was exploring and her commitment to finding out the truth.
The Japan book works variations on, well, the architecture of the Japanese home. Interior versus exterior spaces, public vs. private vs. intimate; often quite literally and remarked on by the narrator, such as in the Edo village standing set, where the dirt-floor customer area gives way to the wood-floor family area gives way to the tatami-mat private bedroom. This movement is implicit in multiple places, from the inside-outside conundrum of the Torii gates on Fushimi Inari Taisha to the ring-like structure of Transcendence headquarters to the social; a key psychological moment late in the book where she is invited into someone's home.
That opening scene also introduces the next nesting item, Character. Character is really the driving heart of this story. The London story was also a Milieu story but within that outer frame it was either an Idea story or an Event story. I'm leaning towards Event; although there are puzzles to solve, they exist more to bring the characters into situations -- events -- which shake up their status quo and force them into new actions.
Character was in the London story but the purest form of it is when a character enters the story with a problem or, in the terminology of several including Mary Robinette, a lie. That is, something the character believes that they need to either confirm or move away from.
The Japan story uses the setting of Japan to frame a series of events that keep shattering the ability of the protagonist to maintain her current lie, forcing her to confront it.
Of course the Prologues confuse things. And here's where it gets extra tricky; the prologue for the Kyoto book takes place in San Francisco, but within a tearoom at the Asian Arts Museum. But here's the real trick (and this, also, I was very conscious of); the first paragraph shows Athena Fox, the person and the life that Penny believes so strongly she can not be and can not have that she isn't even admitting to herself how much she wants it. And the central paradox is right there; because, while it is a costume and she is in fact acting, for her history show on YouTube, Penny is, actually, there and moving with all the poise and style and expertise she thinks she can never have!
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So does MICE help at all in the Paris book? Perhaps as a checklist. I do want this to be strongly milieu but I also want to move behind pure milieu. Also, I want a stronger plot driver. The previous books have been parlously close to a reactive protagonist and I want to see her being active; to have a specific goal and a plan.
She has been using the Dirk Gently method up until now; seemingly wandering around at random, looking at everything (with the reader not knowing if any of it will ever matter) then putting it all together at the end. Because of that potential reader frustration I want to have her more specifically and explicitly looking for information.
Which, actually, backs off on Milieu quite a bit. See, in all of the books so far, socio-cultural specifics have been important for finally figuring out the plot. She has depended on a gestalt of all the people she has interacted with and all the things she has learned about the society when she finally figures out what she needs to solve the puzzle/fix the event.
In the Japan book, the bubble economy and the Lost Decade are simmering along in the background of multiple characters but it is at the climax where she realizes this is the clue to why she was attacked by yakuza -- and how she can get past the last obstacle to finishing that story.
If I have her more directly puzzle-solving, it moves the focus somewhat, and that means that the Milieu of Paris becomes less central.
Plus, for this one I'm introducing the puzzle -- the Idea in MICE terminology -- right in the prologue. Or that could also be seen as Event.
Because I'm unsure of what is going in the book and what is going to be central to the book, but I am pretty fixed on the idea that a fake treasure hunt is at the heart of it.
(At the moment, my inchoate thoughts are about "The Lie of History"; how history is interpretive, and how there are many none-academic interpretations as well, from pop culture to pseudo-history. And the intersect with Art.)
So I really want Montmartre, and a lot of museums, and arts and even a La Boheme sort of starving-artists-sharing-a-garret situation. And possibly steampunk. And there are a few other reactions to previous stories. I feel like having her being a budget traveler this time and having to really watch expenses. I feel like having this be the one she more-or-less gives up on trying to gain basic facility with the language. And I am split on whether I want her to regress on her skills as a world traveler or have her -- at least on the surface -- look like the comfortable seasoned traveler.
And two other inherited-from-previous-story things I'm thinking of making almost running gags. This time, no underground. No sewers, no catacombs. Also, no love affair. Not that she met a boy in London, either. But it just might be funny to be in Paris and not be in or even seeking a relationship.
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Oh, by the way. Orson was writing SF, and he used Idea in his MICE as more of a proposition or theme. Writers who have built on his work sometimes change it to Interrogation or something -- nothing really scans well -- to mean a mystery or puzzle or problem to be solved by the characters that isn't primarily a status-quo disturbing Event.
Spaceship lands on a planet so they can have an adventure there. That's Milieu. Spaceship crashes on a planet, forcing them to try to survive/make a new life, that's Event. Spaceship lands because they are chasing the great space whale -- probably Character. Spaceship crashes and the rest of the story is trying to fix the damned thing -- that's more-or-less "Idea" or whatever it is they are calling it when they don't like the word Idea.
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